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Foreign Service

An effective diagnostician isn't always the one with the newest, fastest equipment. He's often the guy who can combine info from his five senses with what his high-tech tools tell him.

The key to your shop's continued success is your flexibility and openness to new ideas. Emerging technologies and fuels are already changing the face of the transportation industry.

As I drove to the refinery in West Point , VA , I was struck by the fact that there were no tall smokestacks belching out white plumes. The absence of billowing stacks reminded me of a particularly offensive petroleum refinery I used to pass regularly. One day my four-year-old granddaughter was with me. When she spotted the massive clouds she shouted: “Grandpa, look, it's a cloud factory!” She was right. The sky was filled with man-made clouds comprising all sorts of matter.

This was not the case at the refinery I visited recently to learn firsthand how the process of turning soy beans into biodiesel fuel for cars, trucks, boats and industrial engines actually works.

In May of 2005, President Bush visited Virginia Biodiesel Refinery LLC, a family-owned refinery in Eltham, just outside of West Point . I got the same tour the president did and was hosted by a gentleman named Dennis Sulick, who's a chemical engineer and the general manager of the plant. I asked Sulick to walk me through the biodiesel production process from start to finish.

The process starts with the farmer who grows the soy beans, then brings them to a crushing plant in Chesapeake , VA. The plant is owned by Perdue, the chicken people, who feed the soy meal to their chickens. After the soy beans are crushed, the soy oil is separated and shipped in tanker trucks to the Virginia Biodiesel Refinery. Some of the refined soy oil is used for cooking. It's the same refined oil that's the starting point in the manufacture of biodiesel fuel.

The stored soy oil is placed in giant temperature-controlled stainless-steel tanks reminiscent of a brewery. From there it goes through a transesterification reaction process. In this process the soy oil, which has a high content of triglycerides, is mixed with a catalyst�methanol and pot ash (potassium hydroxide). In three to four hours the mixture yields biodiesel floating on the top and crude glycerin at the bottom. The glycerin is sold separately and used in a variety of products, such as soaps and beauty products.

The biodiesel is now ready to be processed further. The first step is to remove any methanol. After that, the biodiesel is filtered twice more to remove any remaining traces of water, methanol, glycerin and triglycerides. From there the finished biodiesel is pumped to massive storage tanks awaiting shipment. All through the process, the liquid must be kept at a precise temperature and each step must be carefully timed.

Samples are taken in all phases of production. They're tested in-house at the refinery and sent out to an independent testing facility as well for verification. At the lab, Sulick let me touch and smell some newly produced biodiesel. It felt slippery like light oil but had no strong diesel odor. In fact, it smelled like regular household cooking oil. And it felt like light oil with some detergent capability component.

I asked Sulick where the biodiesel the plant produces is going. He said their biggest customers are petroleum jobbers who mix the biodiesel with regular diesel to make up the B-20 blends that's being sold to truckers. The B-20 blend is 80% diesel and 20% biodiesel. Sulick said the price of B-20 fluctuates depending on the price of regular diesel. When the cost of crude oil is low, as it was when I visited the refinery, the cost of B-20 may be higher than regular diesel. As soon as the price of crude jumps, as it did last summer, the cost of B-20 falls below that of regular diesel. Sulick said last summer the refinery was running at full capacity�and setting production records�trying to keep up with the enormous demand.

One of the interesting things Sulick talked about was the delicate market balance in the energy production business. I asked if he thought there was enough soy being grown to fill the increasing demand for soy oil to make biodiesel.

“That's the big issue right now,” he said. “That is what's driving prices. Ethanol prices are still above $2 a gallon. They're consuming a lot of corn and the corn prices are very strong because of that demand. The big concern is whether all of the farmers that were growing soy beans this year will jump to corn next year. The high corn prices are actually driving up the soy oil prices. We're right in the middle of the harvest. The harvest is very big. They have soy beans in storage from last year. If you follow regular supply and demand, the prices should be dropping. Now the soy oil prices are almost at record highs. That, coupled with high methanol prices, makes it a difficult market.”

Sulick explained how the energy business in general, whether it be oil, gas or biodiesel, is in a delicate balance. Any energy producer needs to understand costs and know where the market it going. Essentially, a drop in crude oil prices could have a negative influence on the biodiesel market.

Fortunately, Virginia Biodiesel is just one division of a long-established firm that deals in propane, gasoline, home heating oil, trucking, retail fuel outlets, food and other ventures, so they're able to stay in the biodiesel production business for the long haul despite the ups and downs of the market. Experts expect 4 billion gallons of biodiesel fuel to be produced next year, with an increase to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

Biodiesel can be blended with petroleum diesel with little or no engine modifications. It's already being put in the fuel tanks of a variety of vehicles being produced by DaimlerChrysler. There are, in addition to the fact that it's renewable and domestic, some other real benefits. Biodiesel has a higher flash point than petroleum diesel and higher lubricity. Biodiesel blended at a 20% rate with petroleum diesel has a lower wear scar than traditional fuel. The use of biodiesel also has a noticeable effect on exhaust odor; it smells more like french fries cooking than petroleum diesel.

The Trade Secret is to know that the future of transportation in this country is linked to the production of renewable domestic fuels. Biodiesel, or soy diesel, is obviously an important part of the future of this country and the future of every automotive technician.

Sulick told me he loves what he's doing because, being part of a new technology, it's interesting and exciting work. As for the plant itself, Sulick calls it “beautifully simplistic; ...there's a lot of science in it and every step is ASTM-approved.”

What Dennis Sulick and Virginia Biodiesel Refinery are doing is part of a nationwide effort to produce a renewable domestic fuel that could one day impact this country's dependence on imported oil.